Laymen's Guide to Cyber Security

foreign this video has been a long time in the making but it's finally done not done forever mind you the list will constantly evolve with time but done to a point where it's ready for publication so let's get right into it there are three main types of people who might watch this the first are people that don't know or care about cyber security and are completely

unwilling to even learn for those people I recommend that you continue on and reframe that mindset it's an important topic for a variety of reasons and you may come to deeply regret that level of disregard in the future but I can't force you godspeed the second main type of person who may watch this is the person who knows some or very little but wants to learn

and wants to protect themselves for those viewers you're in the right place this list will contain a series of solutions for all aspects of cyber security to a point where you can pick and choose what to add and where based on budget convenience and personal preference one thing I need to be very clear about at the onset here is that cyber and info security are inextricably

and inversely linked to convenience it's basically a set of scales to put it bluntly on one side is private to see in security while on the other is convenience and ease of access raising your level of convenience by Saving passwords for example will always decrease your security and privacy while raising security and privacy on the other hand will almost always lower your overall convenience this is

an immutable trade-off that must be considered and every individual will have their own subjective preference on how to balance those scales this video is all about flexibility the third and final type of potential viewer is influencers or creators this one is a lot more Niche but also substantially more immediate creators watching this video will be doing so for one of two distinct reasons either a they

have already had their Channel compromised and sold to a network of criminal crypto scammers or B they want to prevent that from happening to them in the first place and that may seem like a far-off problem to some people but it's not it's a threat it's immediate and it's out there preying on people in the YouTube ecosystem and other social media right now as I say

this let me put it like this not too long ago I was recently targeted by a malware campaign and rather than a long technical explanation of what happened or how which I did in the past when the attack occurred in a separate video I'll just summarize things in a generalized way there is a global campaign that has existed for years targeting YouTubers not just YouTubers but

that's my personal industry where I have the bulk of experience so that's the angle I'm just focusing on for right now here's how it works first a threat actor will use spear fishing campaigns to infect a Target host they use a variety of methods such as creating dummy websites products embedding malware and legitimate software etc etc they have a lot of different Tools in their arsenal

when they execute an attack successfully after however many tries it takes I.E the victim downloads an infected file thinking it's safe to do so or clicks something they shouldn't have a few things immediately happen first something generally referred to as a stealer and there's a bunch of different types of this there's Red Line Steeler or raccoon Steeler or Bandit stealer et cetera et cetera something called

a stealer will copy the victim's browser instance allowing the attacker to simply replicate the window somewhere else in the world and log into all of your accounts immediately without even tripping two-factor authentication in truth it's a little more complicated than just that but for the sake of Simplicity victims download an infected file or click an infected link their browser instance gets copied while the attacker now

has access to every profile and account where the victims stored credentials in that browser for convenience sounds scary right but that's only the beginning after that the attacker will change the login credentials wherever possible particularly on YouTube accounts or something like that and start selling all of your accounts to be clear there is an entire economy of this taking place each and every day YouTubers are

being compromised constantly and their accounts are then resold and turned into crypto scamming live streams huge names like Linus Tech tips memeology 101 Marco style and more are compromised through this method with their channels then sold off to the highest bidder repurposed into a method of scamming Their audience and all of it is possible because convenience is often prioritized sized far too heavily above security for

a long time years in fact I've simply been talking about these issues covering them in videos and not providing actual real solutions so today I'm going to try to fix that some solutions are free some of them cost money all of the ones that cost money benefit this channel just to be really upfront about that and we have custom Partnerships with a number of the companies

on this list to provide special discounts to the community directly as we hopefully turn this list into a One-Stop shop for hardening your info security as much as humanly possible within reason here we go timestamps are down below for people that want to skip around I'm trying to I'm going to be really thorough about that it's going to be long quite long but feel free to

use any all or none of it as you see fit let's begin with ESET nod32 the very first thing you can do and I'm happy to say that I have worked directly with this company to provide a special discount to our community exclusively is get ESET nod32 for your computer phone or another reset internet security product for whatever device you are trying to protect to be

totally transparent here this is the basic spend some money and increase your security by a fair margin type of option but that also requires a bit of an explanation there is no One-Stop shop or fix all solution to cyber security it doesn't exist it never has it never will it's always a balancing act in the case of ESET in particular when I myself was targeted by

a novel malware campaign attempting to steal my accounts they were one of the only anti-virus options on Earth that had already identified and defeated the malware being sent to me and they also rank highly on every single independent analysis I could find it's a fair bit of money to pay it really is but if you want to spend some cash it's also the easiest thing you

can do right away immediately and increase your online security ESET comes highly recommended by my expert Source Who partnered up with me to make this list it wouldn't even be possible without sick the cat and serves as a huge step up compared to most other antivirus options with a massive number of advanced tools on top of that some seriously advanced stuff if you want to get

into it and you know Tinker around you can find a link down below to our complete list where all the discount links are housed but also remember an exclusive special discount for ESET not 32 antivirus that was given to our community again one of the easiest first things you can do if you're looking to protect yourself next up is your browser Chrome is the browser I'm

focusing on since most people now use it apparently I didn't know this until doing the topic but apparently over 60 percent of the world utilizes the Chrome browser as their primary method of surfing the internet and Chrome is an obvious vulnerability to Target saving your passwords in Chrome is one of the least secure things you can possibly do and while Google certainly takes precautionary steps to

help prevent infiltration of course they do those steps simply are not adequate by themselves when it comes to protecting you for starters I actually recommend Firefox it's free the link is provided in the list and it's also open source something you'll be hearing about kind of a lot today open source software is almost always preferable in these kind of situations Firefox has a lot of additional

features I recommend never saving your passwords in your browser ever under any circumstances but a simple switch like this really can't be overstated however for those who don't want to switch don't want to use a new browser because of convenience or just happen to like their current one enough to stick with it there's a couple more options if people are determined to stick with chrome one

of those options is to always use an incognito window when logging into sensitive accounts this is less convenient of course I know it won't save your 500 tabs and reopen them for you after a restart and you won't be able to Simply click a button and log into your bank for example but if you were ever compromised which is possible and people need to be aware

of that at least you stop them from getting all the important [__] right away it's a good step to take next item on the list is guardio for those who want to throw a little bit of money at the problem I have a direct partnership with a company called guardio and guardio is a threat prevention Chrome extension that works directly with this Channel and I also

want to add here that as I started to research more and more cyber security topics I started to see their name and their research popping up more and more frequently from everything I can find they are actually an excellent option for novice level generalized protection what I mean by novice level is that you don't really have to do anything there's nothing Advanced about it you just

pay the money get the extension use it and it will help you again buying a singular product will never be a fix-all solution but guardio has proven extensively to me that they work hard and very fast to identify and track threats monitor for information leaks remove malicious extensions which is a common type of attack aimed at crypto in particular and much more they have a business

everyone does and there's basically no excuse and that is link checking eventually for some reason everyone out there will have links that they need to click on links from emails links from social media links from third parties you don't know but you kind of have to look at be it for business personal enjoyment you name it there will be links that you must click on when

that happens you should always be plugging a link from untrusted sources and even from trusted sources most of the time into a link Checker hell you should probably even do it with the links from this very video the one we recommend is going to www.virustotal.com click URL right there in the middle paste the link you want to check right in there and hit enter this will

show you if there are any security vendors flagging things on the website and you can also do this with files if you have a file that someone has told you to download for any reason let's say for my example a file in a fake copyright notice which is how they targeted me back when they decided to do that or a file from a potential video sponsor

that's an another angle that they use to hijack YouTuber channels you upload it to virustotal before you open it period and see what comes back if it's clean you're probably good to go that means no security vendors have flagged anything again this is a free step that everyone can take to better protect themselves baby steps do matter the next thing you can do the next thing

you should do is use a password manager I'm old school I use a physical piece of paper locked in a safe surrounded by poisonous vipers in the Temple of Doom Indiana Jones couldn't even get it but for everyone else there are some easier options ESET once again a highly regarded and greatly recommended antivirus option who we are directly partnered with has their own password manager which

would be an excellent option as well but in the interest of making this list as comprehensive and kind of detailed as possible with the best products there's another product that has been recommended to me by not one but two different expert sources independently keepass XC keepass XC can be used on Windows Mac or Linux it's open source huge positive there and allows you to store passwords

and login credentials on your machine it has a little bit of a learning curve I mean not much but it's free and maybe if people want I can do a step by step later down the line on how to use it and what exactly to do of course the link is on our list as well you can click that and go through there and the truth

is there are a lot of decent password managers out there but keepass XC is where I found the most sincere trustworthy and credible recommendations from experts it can take a little bit of time to set up you have to type things out and learn how to use it but it really doesn't take that long and once you've done it it becomes a whole lot easier to

stop saving your credentials in a browser not only that but you also stop having to reset things constantly because you forgot what the password was so you have to do forgot password and get the email and pick a new one and then you're frustrated so you pick a new one and then you forget the new one because you hardly ever have to log in ever to

begin with a good password manager is a dramatic step up for cyber security but also organization very much worth looking into Now we move on to more advanced things I guess like two-factor authentication the truth here is that two-factor authentication is good great even but not all two-factor methods are equal simple SMS text verification which is what most people generally use is kind of one of

the least secure options out there though it is of course a good step to have so for those interested in hardening their security substantially we have a custom relationship now with one of the best Hardware authenticators in existence ubico ubico is a provider of what's called UB keys and UB keys are a much more secure option for two-factor login security there's actually some stunning data on

how well UB Keys manage to protect accounts from user error and they can be used on basically all devices protecting your security in a way that is well and truly Beyond other forms of two-factor authentication they have an incredibly easy to use and Polished interface they prevent a number of attack types and phishing techniques that SMS verification just cannot stop and they also have a one-year

defect warranty on top of that I have a couple of them but the one that came most highly recommended was the 5 series they serve individuals and large businesses meaning that not only is it great for the person who wants to prevent their career critical social media channel from being hijacked I'm talking to you YouTubers it's also great for the medium-sized businesses who have a bunch

of employees where any one of them those employees could be the reason that a threat actor gains access to your systems remember the network is only as strong as the dumbest person using it another little anecdote here a company I worked with up until recently was trying to sell me hacked social media Insurance like Channel insurance for an exorbitant amount of money and instead of paying

them every month I can just use a yubi key and be a little bit smarter prevention is the real best option here and ubico is one of the leading players in the space for preventing your accounts from being compromised by far next up is glinet and once again we have an industry leader here where I've managed to form a direct relationship and secure a special discount

for the community they have a a lot of products by the end of this I'll probably have a few different options I'll most likely do dedicated reviews for a couple of them if people are interested in that once I learned more but for right now the one that I recommend is the x300b Kali this thing all of their products really to be honest but this thing

is incredible for starters they have built-in wire guards supporting 30 plus VPN Solutions at a hardware level and of course big positive open source firmware the level of advanced control they offer I'm talking to you parents about maybe blocking certain devices from the internet at certain times Etc but the level of advanced control that they offer is amazing and yes there's a learning curve a learning

curve I'm still in by the way I'm not an expert on this but for a more advanced example from my expert Source how about this my partner for making this list who basically made the whole thing possible currently Works through hacker one doing bug bounties as they're called for those that don't know he's an exploit Dev and basically what they do is break [__] for money

for lack of a better term because the company wants to know what's broken before someone actually uses it against them it's effectively an entire economy of bounty payouts and legal hacking but it gets better while doing some of these bug bounties my partner hit an IDs and firewall this took his IP it's basically security as a service on an industrial level and blocked it but when

he got banned the IP got picked up by every other company using the same service as a result including but not limited to PNC Bank Wall Street Journal CC Cleaner New York Times Hilton anything by Marriott Delta Bellagio there's more Etc et cetera to get around this easily I might add he spoofed the MAC address on his glinet router because that's a function they do support

which is normally used for connecting to public hot spots and protecting your actual Mac address and was able to resume like nothing happened I'm not saying most people will ever need that level of control or depth or be doing anything even remotely comparable here but when I say that we try to make this list as good as it could possibly get I am serious about that

system features in the advanced dashboard for GLI net routers allowed him to override the existing Mac address thereby circumventing the security as a service ban on the IP and that's really just the start of what these routers offer Xfinity for example says that they have Dynamic IP but the least time on the IP is incredibly long you should be able to unplug and wait 30 seconds

re-plug and good to go but no that doesn't work which lends even more value to the glinet hardware by the way if someone has your IP for any reason such as gaming for example VoIP and decides to DDOS you glinet routers effectively invalidate this attack vector by allowing free form change of your IP in pretty much any circumstance via Max spoofing integrated Hardware level VPN means

that any device connected to the Wi-Fi or Lan ports will be vpned completely through whatever service you personally choose if you want to go that route I'll discuss more on that note in just a second Tor is automatically built into an number of their routers simply enable it you can also pick what exit node country is used and while there certainly is a lot of complexity

here for people who want to really understand the hardware and everything it can do it's also very easy at the most basic level if I can do it I promise you if I can do it anyone can do it making it something we are incredibly proud to have on this list it can be used as a Wi-Fi extender as well signal strength will be larger in

a bigger area of the home or the yard whatever it is and even more on top of that such as failover where if one means of internet access is not available it automatically switches to the next to preserve constant connection great for video games by the way just throwing that out there it's not cheap it's definitely a bit more expensive than most other items on this

list but it's also one of the most impressive and valuable things that you can do to harden your own security and this one doesn't even really subtract from convenience so that's a massive positive also Lucy open source dashboard we all know how I feel about open source and I could probably keep going quite a while when it comes to these but for the sake of time

they're amazing and I'll leave it at that next logically it's time to talk about vpns virtual private networks vpns are a hot button product these days and anyone who has a router from glinet will be able to run any of the larger options directly at a hardware level to be clear you don't actually need a particular router to run a VPN you can get it on

any device there's tons of options etc etc I just wanted to make that clear the VPN company I am personally partnered with is surfshark and I have to say surfshark has treated me incredibly incredibly well since the very first time I ever worked with them I have longer term contracts with them now they support the channel financially and the truth of the matter is I probably

wouldn't even have been able to make all of the videos that I have or paid some of my contacts to help enhance the material without their support so that needs to be stated a lot of the money that they've given me has made the channel possible there's a link for their product Down Below in the database it's an affiliate link right full disclosure same as most

things on this list where possible and there are a large number of benefits to using a VPN that could be discussed at length but some of them are as follows IP protection anonymity bypassing geo-locked content as well as much safer connections to public Wi-Fi like hotels or coffee shops and the list goes on surfshark supports me and I support them in return however I would be

remiss if I didn't mention that a couple of my expert sources have recommended a few of their own preferred VPN Solutions such as mulvad and winscribe being the glinet routers support pretty much every single major VPN out there I'm officially recommending surfshark to you the audience while also acknowledging that my sources have their own opinions on the matter which they wanted me to mention to be

clear again you don't actually need a specialized router for a VPN to still be quite valuable to you it's just a synergistic pairing in this particular case but again the list is meant to be infinitely flexible for whatever person watches and wants to take some sort of action so feel free to use these options as ucfit alright this is where we get into the really advanced

stuff slnt silent Faraday bags these are basically the Pinnacle of privacy slnt bags phone sleeves and laptop cases block all signals GPS solar flare interference RFID attacks and generally prevent any remote signal ever from accessing any devices inside of course you can't use the device while it's inside either this is the pause button the timeout option and a way to protect your device totally and completely

for as long as you want these are the ultimate protection slash isolation for any digital device if you're concerned in any way about outside access to your information or signals or malicious attacks anything like that this is a lockdown solution that controls your digital footprint in the tightest way possible while traveling through an area with compromised networks as an example for any reason these are the

best option to just shut down and protect all of your information slnt has a lot of different marketing points that they focus on but one angle I myself keep coming back to is Health mental health perhaps physical health though I don't have any data for that particular angle right now even personality Health our devices are always there always injecting things almost into our very brain through

addictively designed pop-ups and advertisements and notifications slnt bags are just a complete break from all that nothing goes in nothing comes out no signals you've gone electronically dark if you will for whatever reason you want to until the device comes out of the bag and there won't be as many situations where this is as required or desirable as some of the other entries on the list

but the products are very very high quality and once again we have secured a special partnership discount for anyone interested I personally use a phone sleeve quite often I put my phone in there when I want to shut the digital world out of my life for at least a few hours with no exceptions and I love it but like I said before this is meant to

be an extremely diverse list of options where you can sync as much or as little as you want into it last thing and this one surprise surprise is for crypto Rose I hate crypto personally I think it's a cesspool of speculation that has devolved to a point of net negative impact so large it should be either eradicated or fundamentally transformed but I didn't always see it

that way once upon a time I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed I was the nerd who was telling people that technology would change the world and it still might although maybe in a bad way but but whatever what it became here along the way is something I want nothing to do with however that being said there are people out there who use it for real reasons who

profit from it daily and who support the industry and want to engage with it safely of all things this is of course much more specific but for crypto traders who want to increase their personal digital security we have formed a relationship with a company called secux to provide Hardware wallets crypto is being targeted by attackers every single day at incredible mind-blowing speed and if you're not

taking measures to protect yourself and curb that level of abuse rampant scamming you're kind of part of the problem as to why the industry is infested with low level scammers they wouldn't do it if it wasn't lucrative and it's lucrative I assure you because people have [__] level security SECU X Hardware wallets are one of the best methods to protect your crypto regardless of how I

feel about it personal story time way back when I actually traded crypto I ordered a ledger Hardware wallet and guess what it never showed up I ordered it I paid for it and I never got it I have not heard of that happening with secux from anyone not from any of the sources I spoke with and they support more features and tokens than I even kind

of thought possible personally I'm not super into the technical side but for those interested in a technical explanation this was not done by me this was done by my partner here it is certified cceal5 plus encryption eal5 plus refers to evaluation Assurance level five plus it's a security Assurance level defined with the common criteria CC framework e-a-l-e-a-l-5 plus is a relatively high level of assurance involving

a rigorous evaluation process that includes thorough testing and Analysis of the security function and mechanisms of a product there's extensive documentation and evidence to demonstrate the product's security features and their effectiveness the Plus in eal5 plus indicates that additional requirements or criteria beyond the standard eal5 level have been met el5 plus I mean that's a mouthful I keep saying it eal5 plus is technically associated with

products used in high security environments such as Government systems or critical infrastructure where strong security assurances are necessary there is a secure element chip that was co-opted between Infineon and arm to enhance the performance of Chip card and security controllers protection via encryption of not only your private key but also your pin and a lot of things here's a list tamper evident large touch screen Superior

to Ledger color display Hands-On clear sign Clear View display of transaction details unlike Ledger or Tresor 10 000 plus coins tokens more support for tokens and coins than Ledger and trezor by far nft supported if that's your thing but honestly [__] have to use in my opinion multi-chain because we're not maximalists and only one of us in this partnership likes crypto web-based app USB micro b

Dynamic pin entry passphrase capability and up to 500 accounts basically long story short if you want to be secure in crypto use that for right now that's basically it any and all of these things can be used any and all of them will enhance your security beyond the basic premise of simple convenience but remember threat protection is an evolving world nothing is a fix all safe

measure everything is subject to change you can pay someone money and raise protection if it's the right service you can spend some time learning and raise it even more by far but that will always be a trade-off for convenience and ease of use everyone watching needs to decide for themselves what to pursue and why my only advice is to be conscious of these things rather than

asleep the digital world is kind of incredible it allows me to make a living and do all sorts of fun things but it's also terrifying and we should all be extremely cognizant of when and where we are all vulnerable for YouTubers there are additional stories every day where creators have their entire livelihood just hijacked because they have poor security don't let it happen to you in

the past I merely reported on these things I just talked about them after the fact but now we have concrete specialized brand Partnerships so that anyone who might be concerned can take real action and get a discount in the process as always thank you all for watching over time the list will certainly evolve and improve I hope if your company interested in reaching out my email

is down below if you're a viewer there's a link tree link down there and then everything is clearly labeled in the link tree we have tracking for a lot of this a lot of these are affiliate links some of them are free Etc just to keep everyone aware but yeah I'll cut it there and I'll stop rambling have a nice night [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]